Sunday, March 14, 2010

I know it makes me lose Hoosier street cred...

...but I like Daylight Savings Time.

For one thing, it shuts my winter blahs off like a switch. I know that it's just a bit of horological legerdemain, that we're sawing an hour off one end and gluing it to the other, but six thirty is just a damned depressing time for the sun to be setting and somehow calling that time "seven thirty" instead makes everything better.

29 comments:

Roberta X said...

Harrumph.

fast richard said...

I'm the opposite. I'd like to be able to go to work after sunrise for more than four months of the year.

Buffboy said...

Same here, even back in the Nixon administration when they started it in January, I liked it. I don't mind going to work in the dark but I always liked having some light after work.

Joanna said...

I like that I can ride my bike after work without having to worry about grues on the final leg ...

... but I also liked having the sun up when I left for work in the morning. It was just getting to where I didn't have to use my headlights, and then yoink! No more morning sun 'til April! Ha ha neener!

BLeh.

Frank W. James said...

Only non-Hoosiers, golfers and Mitch Daniel devotees appreciate this time/clock stupidity and I am None Of The Above...

All The Best,
Frank W. James

Anonymous said...

"I like that I can ride my bike after work without having to worry about grues on the final leg ... "

Same here. It's damn near impossible for me to get out of work early enough for a bike ride until the time change. I HATE riding with lights on the street at night and all of the MUPs around here are off-limits after dark (technically, they are all parks, which close at sunset).

Plus, it'll give me more opportunities to hunt before the end of our extended doe season in a couple weeks.

Chris

Anonymous said...

Well, finally an issue where we can disagree TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY!

"six thirty is just a damned depressing time for the sun to be setting and somehow calling that time "seven thirty" instead makes everything better."

Well, hell...give Mother another month and she'da done that on her own.

If we're gonna jerk the clock around, let's just go ahead and turn it back about twenty years...now that would "make everything better"!

AT

Joseph said...

I like it as well and tire of all the whining & hand-wringing about it. My favorite is the farmers who say that it confuses the cows. Seriously? If you have cows thhat cN read a clock, call someone!

Anonymous said...

I'd rather they just left it on this setting and stopped screwing with it.

It's just one more facet of government control that needs to be done away with, soonest.

I get up early and watching the sun rise is just as much fun as watching it set.

Gmac

Buck said...

I go to work before the sun rises, work a ten hour days inside. So like Tam the change helps my mood.

Anonymous said...

I'd rather have the sunlight in the morning than after work, but that is my opinion and nothing more or less.

Jim

Unknown.Rodent said...

I always knew you were a woman of rare intellect, insight and wisdom. (I am sure this has nothing to do with the fact that I agree with you.) Moving the daylight to the end of the day does tend to lift my spirits and set the tone of the coming spring.

Turk Turon said...

Indiana is a unique state when it comes to DST. Decades ago I had a GF who was a dedicated astrologer. She had a bookshelf filled with books that enabled her to look up Indiana local time and convert it to GMT. It seems that Indiana used to have "local option" DST and so some counties opted in while others didn't. Some cities opted in and the surrounding counties didn't. And some counties switched back and forth as the voters changed their minds. DST can be hard on farmers who need to get in a couple of hours of work as soon as the sun comes up, and then head to their 9-to-5 "day jobs".

Gregg said...

As I sit here in AZ, no longer having to worry about the BS that was DST I have to wonder how Indiana is unique. As far as I know y'all no longer have local option DST. If I am correct then just how is IN any different than AZ when it comes to DST?

Btw, I grew up in Ohio and hated DST. The number of hours of daylight change naturally. The time clock is an artificial, arbitrary means of measuring time set up so that we can work together. It causes less confusion if it is just left the H alone. Admittedly this was a bigger issue before teh interwebs, especially for people who did not read bird cage liner or watch the boob tube.

Timmeehh said...

Six thirty?! LOL

Try living up here, when the sun sets at 4:17pm on Dec 21. Of course we can't see the sun cuz of all the rain and clouds.

You'd be trying to saw thru yer wrists with a butterknife by October!

Frank W. James said...

Joseph: Obviously, you are someone who thinks milk only comes out of a jug, nor have you ever worked in a dairy barn at o-dark-thirty in the morning.

JackAss...

All The Best,
Frank W. James

Stretch said...

Grandma Smith always used the terms "town time" and "farm time" in the summer. Medical, dental, etc. appointments were made on "town time." Social events and church were usually (but not always) in "farm time."
When I complained 'bout lack of daylight during winter Dad always offers up "Try getting up earlier."

GuardDuck said...

In-laws have a dairy farm, they don't change the clocks. The cows need milking at the same 'time' every day, not the same position on the clock face.

What they think about their city dwelling daughter who is still asleep hours after they've been up doing chores is better left unsaid.

Anonymous said...

AT:

Turn MY clock back twenty years, but leave the clock on the cutie one street over and two blocks down just like it is...

cap'n chumbucket

Justthisguy said...

DST is insane. If you want to get up an hour earlier in the summer, then do so. Don't make everybody else do so. It particularly sucks for night people, as everything closes an hour earlier.

Tam said...

"When I complained 'bout lack of daylight during winter Dad always offers up "Try getting up earlier.""

I'm up before dawn already.

Jeff said...

I'm guessing you might feel differently if you'd lived in IN without DST. Its a marvelous thing. I almost got a Ditch Mitch bumper sticker when he screwed it all up, and I HATE bumper stickers.

PQ said...

Burn the heretic.

Tam said...

"I'm guessing you might feel differently if you'd lived in IN without DST."

I'm guessing you're wrong.

I don't have any cows to milk, but I do have a bike to ride, and having a couple hours of daylight left to do so when my roommate gets home from work is teh awesome.

Hell, the only thing I hated about going to Nashville in the summertime to visit Oleg was that, with Knoxville being on the western edge of Eastern time and Nashville being on the eastern edge of Central, I'd lose thirty minutes or more of daylight in high summer. I like sitting on the porch reading at 9:00 with the sky still light...

Justthisguy said...

But, TAM! It's not really 9:00 pm! The Sun Angle is the Actual time! Set one clock to Zulu for Internet Friends, another to Apparent Solar Time for eating and sleeping. Yer not timeclockishly employed anyway, so what do you care?

Anonymous said...

Why can't I just leave this alone? It's not such a big deal...only it is, innit?

Because the unnecessary, unwarranted, unnatural, -and unconstitutional- machinations of .gov are wrong. They are wrong when they take the fruit of your labor and hand it to those who grew none, they are wrong when they prop up banks and manufacturers that deserve to die, they are wrong when they dictate the price the doc charges to fix your ticker, they are wrong when they force you to wear a helmet so as not to splatter your brains on I-75, they are wrong when they would remove the means from your hands to protect yourself from robbers, rapists, zombies, or .gov itself...

And they are wrong when they purport to "save" daylight so that you can read your book or ride your bike 'til 9 f'n p.m.

I know it, you know it, everybody here that is loathe to whisper that the Empress Is Nekkid knows it...they're just wrong. And this time my dear erudite, articulate, intelligent, prolific fount of knowledge, history, and humor, this time, so are you.

Al Terego

Jerry in Texas said...

Psssst. I like it too. Be very quiet so we don't get lynched.

Justthisguy said...

Git a rope! (just kidding, for my fellow literal-minded folks)

Doug said...

I propose year-round Central Daylight Time. It'd be just like the year-round Eastern Standard Time but we would have DST. So we could regard ourselves as "forward thinking" instead of backward.